


A Feeling You Have Felt Somewhere Before

by Hamlet D Tusk (mikawritesthings)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dream Sequences, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Logic, Kinky sex, Other, Self-Indulgent, Slow Burn, Special Interest, autistic protagonist, coping with my chronic pain by pretending im a doll, haunted dolls, heavily researched, i went down a rabbit hole reading about bisque dolls for this i hope yall are happy, living dolls, weird gender shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:29:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikawritesthings/pseuds/Hamlet%20D%20Tusk
Summary: A young woman finds a particularly interesting doll at a thrift store.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Nonbinary Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. A Creepy Doll

**Author's Note:**

> This was born from an idea I had for "haunted dollplay" as a specific kink and/or scene. It wound up being way more... poetic than I initially expected.

When I tell people that I collect and restore dolls as a hobby, there tend to be two different mental images. Some picture Barbies, Monster High, and other such plasticky fashion dolls. They imagine me scouring yard sales and thrift stores for rare finds, touching up the paint on little sculpted faces, replacing matted nylon hair with miniature wigs. Most people, though, picture something out of a horror movie; they imagine that I own a wall of creepy Victorian porcelain dolls with unblinking eyes, ready to come alive and strangle any unwitting guests in their sleep.

That first mental image is more accurate. The history of the toy industry, especially from the 80’s onward, is kind of a special interest of mine. I’ve bored plenty of people to death with long speeches about the decline in quality of _Ever After High_ dolls, the anti-Barbie panic of the aughts, the breadth of TV cartoons from the Reagan administration that were engineered to sell toys. And that’s _without_ getting into my opinions on the matter, of which I have a few.

But I have dipped my toe into creepy Victorian dolls. Once. And it’s actually how I met my partner.

It was a cool, crisp Saturday in early October. The sky was brilliant white, like the cloud cover was a wedding veil over the sun. I was trolling the usual weird thrift shops on Marble Avenue for any interesting stuff they might have this time around. Goodwill’s toy section was pretty barren. Same went for the hole-in-the-wall place down the street. I managed to find a newer-generation Barbie (unclothed) at the Greenlight for dirt cheap, though. Normally not the kind of thing I’d go in for, but she looked kind of like me, and it’s pretty tough to find fashion dolls who at all resemble my rectangular Asian self. Plus I had plenty of clothes at home that’d fit her just fine.

As soon as I gently placed the me-Barbie into my basket, my eyes landed on an imitation porcelain doll among shelves of its imitation porcelain comrades. A _boy_ doll. That was pretty damn rare. I leaned in to inspect it closer.

It was a beautifully crafted doll of stylized, almost-childlike proportions; ball-jointed, rosy-cheeked, with a pristine head of short grassy-green hair. A few inches taller than most of my Barbies, I guessed, though it was currently sitting down. It wore an adorable little outfit that looked custom-made: a ruffled white shirt, double-breasted black waistcoat, short pants, stockings, and fancy little shoes. Unlike most dolls of its type, its face mold was far more cute than uncanny. Some people describe certain types of features as “elfin”; this doll’s features were gnomish. Its lips, I noticed, turned ever-so-slightly downward at the corners.

“So you’ve stumbled upon _le petit prince_ ,” said a silky alto voice from over my shoulder.

I spun around. “Oh, hi, Ms. Chao.”

Ms. Chao was the owner of the Greenlight; a tall, grey-haired South Asian woman somewhere in her fifties, with sharp eyes behind her round glasses. She was also a connoisseur of dolls, albeit more leaning towards the archetypal bisque dolls of olden times. We’d often have long conversations over tea, swapping information about toys and antiques.

I looked at the doll, then back to her. “ _Le petit prince?_ ”

Ms. Chao shrugged. “That’s just the nickname I gave them. Princess dolls are a dime a dozen, so a handsome prince is something like finding a unicorn.”

I nodded in understanding, thinking of how hard it was to find clothes for my Ken doll that expanded beyond T-shirts and jeans. “It’s not _actually_ Victorian, is it?” I asked.

Ms. Chao scoffs. “Hardly. You can tell from the quality of the porcelain. I believe they’re a mass-produced collector’s item from the late 1960s, maybe 1970s. Or, at least, they _were._ ”

“Were?”

“Indeed. I’ve a suspicion that they were originally a _female_ doll. But someone down the line gave them a much shorter wig and an entirely different wardrobe. Hence my usage of the singular they.”

“Wow.” I hadn’t heard of anyone customizing a porcelain doll before.

“The gentleman who donated them,” Ms. Chao continued, “included a few alternate pieces of clothing. All of them appeared custom-made. Clearly, this doll was very important to someone. They’re relatively unique, too; take another look at their eyes.”

Sure enough, the doll’s inset eyes --amber brown rather than the blue I’d expected-- were cast slightly downward.

“It’s a factory defect,” Ms. Chao said. “But it adds quite a bit character to the face. For an actual 19th-century bisque doll, that kind of detail would cause its value to skyrocket. But since Their Highness here was mass-produced…” She clucked her tongue softly.

I looked at the doll. Something about those downcast eyes, that charming face, those fancy clothes...

“How much do you want for them?” I asked. Hell with it, I’d been saving up for this kind of impulse buy. Even so, a voice whispered in the back of my head, these things weren’t exactly cheap.

Ms. Chao raised an eyebrow. “Depends. Are you going to take good care of them?”

“Of course I am,” I said, already planning to give them the seat of honor among my other dolls.

“Are you going to play with them?”

“I… guess?”

“And are you going to _love_ them?”

Could an adult love a toy the same way a child could?

I sighed. “Yes. Yes, I will.”

Ms. Chao gave me an intense look, one that practically pierced into my soul. “Then for _you_ , my dear, they and their wardrobe are free.” 

She smiled a rare smile. “No refunds.”

I took the doll home in my backpack, peeking through a gap in the top zipper. Having a doll head sticking out of my bag earned me a few weird looks on the bus, but I’d done this drill a million times before.

_Le petit prince_ ended up taking center stage on the bookshelf in my room, among my other rare dolls. This included a few old _Monster High_ dolls customized by my sister, a handmade kokeshi plush that a friend of mine bought in Japan, and countless Barbies of bygone eras. As soon as I dug a few appropriately-sized clothes (a green skirt and a shirt that looked remarkably like chainmail) out of my bin of spare parts, I dressed up the me-Barbie and seated it next to the prince.

_That night, I am a knight in shining armor and billowing skirts both. My name is whispered in legends across the land, feared by the evil and loved by the good. Many suitors have tried to woo me. But I have turned them all down, caring not for their advances. My one true love comes when a demon queen kidnaps the princess of a faraway kingdom. I fight her off, so that I may rescue this fair maiden. But I find a handsome ball-jointed prince where the princess should be. He is beautiful, but he is melancholy, and he cannot look me in the eye. Even so, I find myself falling in love with him._

_We are married in the autumn, just as the leaves are beginning to fall. I kiss his porcelain lips; they are cold as clay._

_“When will you meet my gaze?” I ask my prince._

_His eyes turn upward. “I will meet your gaze, darling, when you love me.”_

I woke up that morning to a disaster.


	2. Something Moving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The doll gets creepier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, this is where things start to get actually explicit.

The bookshelf in my room was a war zone. Dolls were haphazardly strewn all across the floor, lying on their faces as if they’d been thrown. Scratches coated both the wall behind and the surface underneath the dolls. I picked up the nearest Barbie (originally merch from  _ The Princess and the Pauper _ ) to try and assess the damage. It had a massive gash down the plastic of its torso, its head had been unceremoniously ripped from its body, and its clothes had been torn to shreds. The head was nearby, covered in bite marks. Damaged beyond repair.

Almost every other doll was like this, too. Mangled Barbie corpses were strewn about everywhere. And at the center of it all sat the prince, completely untouched.

Except for one small detail: now, instead of looking down, they were looking up.

I scrambled for my phone and dialed Ms. Chao almost immediately. It took three agonizing rings before she picked up.

“Good morning, Lu. How may I help you?” she asked. There was an oddly self-satisfied tone in her voice.

“The doll is haunted,” I said. “ _ Why did you not tell me the doll was haunted. _ ”

“Because I wasn’t  _ sure,  _ Lu. I must thank you for confirming my suspicions.”

“You don’t understand! I-- I-- That  _ thing  _ destroyed the rarest dolls in my collection! All my special-edition, vintage…” I trailed off, forcing myself to take a few deep breaths.

“Did they destroy  _ all  _ your other dolls?”

“What? All… I don’t know.”

“I’ve got some experience with haunted dolls, my dear. When things like this happen, you must take stock of the situation at hand before you act too rashly. First, I’d like you to pay attention to what they  _ didn’t  _ destroy along with what they  _ did. _ ”

I looked at the shelf again, lowering the phone from my ear. The customized dolls, the handmade kokeshi plush, and Barbie-me were still there. A few of them had been knocked over, but they hadn’t been damaged in the slightest.

I picked the phone back up. “It… They didn’t damage anything sentimental.”

“Hmm.” Ms. Chao was silent for a bit, as if trying to formulate her exact next words. 

“If  _ you _ were seated on a wooden bench,” she finally said, “in an unfamiliar house, surrounded by misshapen plastic mannequins and expected to remain still for eight hours, would you not also be frustrated?”

I thought of the time I almost got stuck in a shop window as a kid, and shuddered. “Yeah, you have a point.”

“The prince is  _ bored, _ Lu. Understimulated. Same as a frustrated child, or an unattended puppy, or an especially creative adult. Give them something to do, and they will doubtless redirect their energy.”

Something to do? I thought of the stim toys I kept discreetly stashed in my bag, the doodles I used to make in the margins of notebooks. I could give them something to do, alright.

Then I looked back at the bookshelf. As I’d been talking with Ms. Chao, the prince had somehow gotten into a tube of black acrylic paint and started to leave tiny handprints all over the wall. Before they could make another, I snatched the tube away, put my hands on my hips, and sighed.

“I know you’re frustrated,” I said, “but destroying stuff is not the answer.  _ Especially  _ not destroying my dolls, alright?”

The prince’s head kind of drooped to the side, in a way that could almost be mistaken for a head tilt.

“Here,” I said. I grabbed the kneaded eraser from my desk and placed it in front of them. “If you want to take your energy out on something, take it out on this.”

I blinked. A set of tiny claw marks appeared in the eraser. I blinked again. The eraser was squashed in one place. A third time, and it was squashed in a different place.

“Do you like it?”

Tiny scratches appeared in the eraser, looking like the word YES.

I broke out more toys: a few Lego figures, an old fidget cube, some origami paper with a booklet of instructions. After some thought, I also brought them a notepad and a ballpoint pen.

“I have to go to work pretty soon,” I told them, “but I’ll be back in a bit. Are you gonna be okay here?”

The prince’s head dropped downward. It looked like a nod.

I came home that evening to find my room looking slightly less chaotic. The mangled Barbie parts were mostly off the floor and on my desk. The dolls that had been knocked over were upright again. Scratch marks and black handprints remained, but there weren’t any new ones. Plus, all the origami paper had been folded: into cranes, boxes, flowers, but mostly frogs.

There was new writing on the notepad, too.

_ My newfound friend, _

_ How wonderful it is that you have found me. I must firstly apologize for the damage I caused in this place; I was yet unsure of your intentions, and found myself half-prepared to take on the role of the poltergeist. I must also thank you for your hospitality and patience thus far. With the gods willing, it will not run thin. _

_ Please excuse my clumsy attempt at cleaning up after myself. My joints, articulated though they are, have become stiff from the curse placed upon me. Perhaps when I am real I will be more able to help you.  _

_ Here, I mean “real” in the sense of the wooden Pinocchio, “real” in the sense of Galatea brought to life by Pygmalion. Like the handsome prince cursed to be a frog, my spell can only be broken by love. Whether that is true love’s kiss, love as a child has for their toy, or even lovemaking (if that is at all possible) has yet to be seen. If you are willing and able, I will accept any help you can give. _

_ Yours, _

_ Hamlet _

“Hamlet,” I whispered to myself. Now I knew the prince’s name.

The mention of lovemaking stood out to me, though. Hamlet wasn’t talking about  _ me  _ as a partner specifically, right?

No, of course not.

Of course not.

_ My prince does not make love to me that night. Nor the next, nor the next. I long for him to thrust himself upon me, for him to make me his and to make him mine, but he never offers. He lies in bed each night, completely still upon his back like the doll he is. Each night, he stares up at the star-patterns on the ceiling until he falls asleep. _

_ “When will you make love to me?” I ask him one chilly winter evening. _

_ He looks away from me, to his right. “I will make love to you, darling, when you undress me.” _


	3. The Wooden Box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been 84 years, but I'm done! This one's gonna be on the longer side, as well as _actually_ explicit.

It took some time for Hamlet and I to get used to living with each other. I don’t know how Ms. Chao treated them while they lived in her shop, but they seemed to expect me to know their language already. More than once, I’d come home from work to find them sitting on my desk rather than the bookshelf, hands folded in their lap as if expecting something. Never _looking_ at me, though; they’d always be staring somewhere more off to their right.

“Look,” I told them once, “I’m not a mind reader. If you want something, you can write it on the notepad.”

They tilted their head.

“You don’t have to save your notes for special occasions, alright? We gotta communicate. That’s part of being a good roommate. Besides, I like seeing your thoughts.”

A few seconds later, they’d written on the notepad:

_Would you mind turning the heat down?_

_-H_

Thus, we adjusted. We spent months building up a comfortable routine. Crisp fall weather faded into icy winter, until my sister called one day in early December.

I was standing in the kitchen, attempting to make a dent in the mountain of dirty dishes I’d somehow accumulated. My phone rang with the annoying robot ringtone that I’d selected specifically for my sister’s calls, and I almost slipped running to get my phone from my room.

“Hey, Lulu,” she said in her affected valley girl accent. This was something of a running joke between us; though our family was Chinese-American and quite literally lived on the opposite end of the country from California, I used to joke that she had the soul of a stereotypical blonde.

“Hey, Bunny,” I said in a normal human voice. “What’s up?”

“Hunter and I are having a movie night tonight.” I rolled my eyes a little when she mentioned him; Hunter was her boyfriend. My sister was great, but she was very heterosexual. 

“We’re gonna drink a few beers, make some food, watch some old Disney movies, you know the drill,” she said. “And you are _super_ invited.”

I looked over at Hamlet. They were staring off to their right. I hadn’t taken a night out since I got them. Nothing said they wouldn’t be okay spending the evening alone, but…

Just then, I noticed a new message on their notepad.

_Ask them if you can bring a plus-one._

_-H_

I felt my face heat up a little when I realized that the phone was on speaker. Of _course_ Hamlet could hear everything I was saying. That wasn’t a half bad idea, though. Bunny was a doll hobbyist, too, albeit far more into radically customizing the dolls than restoring them. She’d absolutely _adore_ Hamlet.

“Is it okay if I bring one of my projects?” I asked. “You will never guess what I picked up at Greenlight back in October.”

“A creepy doll?”

“Excuse you, a _cute_ doll. I’m pretty sure they’re haunted, too.” I said that last line with a touch of theatrical mystique that I knew Bunny would appreciate.

Bunny whistled. “Alright, now I have to see that. We’ll pick you up at 6:30. Oh, and Lulu?”

“Yes?”

“Get yourself a girlfriend.”

With that, she hung up.

I looked at the clock on the wall. It was around 3:45; plenty of time to get ready. _But what to wear?_

As I turned to face my closet, my eyes skated over the bookshelf, and froze.

Hamlet was gone.

There was an empty space where they’d normally sit. None of the other dolls had been jostled, so they probably hadn’t bolted. Hamlet wasn’t on my desk, either, or my bed. I was just about ready to panic when I heard a voice from directly behind: 

“I should probably wear something different.”

The source of the voice was an androgynous, slender figure with pale skin and short green hair, gnomish features and amber-brown eyes that would not look into mine. They were dressed in old-fashioned clothes: a ruffled white shirt, a black waistcoat, short pants, stockings, fancy little dress shoes…

Hamlet. A human-sized Hamlet.

I reeled backward with shock, having trouble registering what just happened. It took a second for me to get my words back.

“H-H- _How?!_ ” I managed to sputter.

They gestured for me to look closer at their wrist. Despite Hamlet’s current human scale, despite their newfound ability to speak, all their joints were articulated ball joints.

I swallowed. It was only now, with Hamlet at the size of a human, that I realized they were kind of _cute._ Maybe it was that Victorian-style charm, some instinct to treat them like a dandy little lad dying of consumption. Maybe it was the outfit. Maybe it was just that, up until now, I’d thought of them as a literal doll. But it was something.

“If my sister sees that, she’ll have a few questions,” I said.

“It’s winter,” Hamlet answered. “I can cover every one of my joints with clothing, and both she and her beau will think it’s against the winter chill.”

I remembered digging through their alternate wardrobe; that was really just a euphemism for an old shoebox full of other clothes sized to fit them. There was probably a winter coat and long pants in there somewhere, but those pieces were all still doll-sized.

“Do all your clothes do…” I gestured vaguely at them, trying to indicate a doll growing to human proportions. “...That? I mean, no offense, but you’re way too short for any of _my_ long pants to fit you.”

Hamlet nodded. Their face was neutral, but they had a strange gleam in their eye. “Any of my clothes can fit me. On one condition,” they said. “I might be human-sized, but I am still a doll.” They looked at the spot under my desk where the shoebox was stored. “ _You_ must be the one to dress me.”

My face was burning again. I suddenly recalled those weird dreams I’d had back in October. Back then, I’d just brushed them off as a side effect of living with a haunted doll, but it was starting to register how much those were my actual feelings.

“You know there are some _implications_ there,” I said. “With the whole dressing thing, and the, uh, _undressing_ that requires.”

“And what about them?” said Hamlet.

“I mean, as-as much as I’d be interested…” I looked at the clock out in the hallway. It was a little after 4 now. 

We had plenty of time.

I took a deep breath in. Then out. “Alright,” I said.

As detailed as their clothes were in human scale, everything still attached with hooks and eyes in the back. I started by walking up behind and taking off their waistcoat; it seemed the least intimate. Somehow, though, it was a challenge to avoid touching them.

Next task was to take off their shirt. That was the hardest part by far. Seeing the smooth porcelain of their bare back, some primal instinct within me wanted to wrap my arms around them. To kiss the joint of their neck and make them shiver. I resisted, deciding instead to fill the space with small talk.

“So, uh…” I said.

I could not think of any small talk.

Fortunately, before things could get any more tense than they already were, I remembered something I’d been meaning to ask. “You’re from the 70’s, right?”

“This _body_ is from the 70’s,” Hamlet said. “ _My_ timeline is a bit more tangled than that.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“No.” They paused for five seconds. “Yes. I can ‘elaborate’ in that mine is the soul of a poet from long before the 1970s _or_ your time; perhaps even a time that never was.”

“Ah. So that’d explain why your letters are phrased _like that._ ” By then, I’d undressed them completely. I stepped back to examine them and… Why in God’s name had I imagined them with genitals? Yet again, my face was on fire. I did a 180 towards my desk, but still heard them chuckle to themself.

To distract myself, I dug through their shoebox wardrobe to find some winter clothes. Eventually, I settled on a baby-blue coat with fancy silver trim, a ruffled shirt, grey sweater, and pinstriped navy-colored pants. Putting clothes back on them was far less awkward. By that point, I’d almost gotten used to the sexual tension.

For my own self, I threw on a tacky sword-patterned hoodie over a green dress and black leggings. Nothing too fancy, though my favorite coat’s space-age silvery color was enough to blind most people. I was just dipping into the bathroom to apply eyeliner when I heard Bunny honking her car’s horn outside my door. Where had the time gone?

I stepped outside, Hamlet following close behind, to be almost immediately accosted by a tight embrace from my doting sister. 

“Oh my _God, Lu,_ how have you _been?”_ Bunny squealed at an octave high enough to blow my eardrums out.

“I’m good,” I said when she finally let me up for air. 

As usual, my sister looked like a more elegant version of me, dignified and regal in an imitation-designer white coat. Her tastes in fashion and grooming had always been more subdued than my love of garish outfits and neon-colored hair. (Even now, I was itching to dye my hair red again.) People tended to be surprised when our respective personalities were the opposite of our looks.

Bunny looked about to say something when her eyes widened. She’d noticed Hamlet.

“Lu!” she said, in a half-pouting tone. “You never told me you had a _girlfriend!_ I thought you were talking about an actual doll!”

“I prefer the term ‘partner,’ thanks,” Hamlet said. “My name is Hamlet. It’s very nice to meet you.” They did not offer a hand to shake.

Bunny looked them up and down for a second, and a half-smile tugged at her lips. “Boy… Can I call you ‘boy’?”

“‘Prince,’” Hamlet answered.

“Prince, I hope you don’t mind, but you’re a _catch._ You take good care of my sister, alright?” She gave me an approving wink from the corner of her eye.

Just then, someone-- that “someone” being Hunter-- honked the opening rhythm to the Mario theme from the driver seat of Bunny’s car. He poked his head out the window. “We ready to go?”

“Coming,” Bunny called to him. She looked back toward us. “Alright, we gotta decide whether to start with _Tangled_ or _Beauty and the Beast.”_

As we walked down to the car, I felt my prince’s cold porcelain hand gently grab onto mine. They squeezed. I squeezed back.

_That night, my prince rests next to me naked. He lies on his side, his back to my front. I close the gap between us and embrace him, his porcelain body cold against my skin._

_“Will you make love to me now?” I murmur. My lips land on his ear, his neck, the dip leading to his shoulder joint._

_Something like a shaky breath escapes from him. “Touch me.”_

_I oblige. My kisses become more insistent, more heavy. With my hands, I learn every joint in his body until I find the space between his legs. He moans as I explore it, trembles as my fingers enter him, gasps until he finally cries out and lies still._

_There is a silence for a moment. My prince rolls over to face me._

_“Will you do the same for me?” I ask._

_His gaze flits over to his left. “I will do the same for you,” he says, “soon.”_


End file.
